My Lenovo laptop is four years old today, Windows 10, didn’t cost much, and she runs like a dream.
My first one was Windows 98 back in '98, and I was told I needed AV software, I bought the CD. I’ve had others in between: XP, W7 & W8, and always gone along with the AV mantra but choosing one of the freebies.
Then, when getting this latest lappy four years ago, I thought: state of the art, bells & whistles all for a quarter of the price I paid in '98, what if I take this opportunity to see what happens if I say no to any AV bloatware? (If she goes up in smoke, I’ll get another). So I did, and I made sure Window Security, Firewall etc was switched on. And I think it was/is a wise move.
I remember 10 years ago my bank, hsbc, recommending something called Trusteer Rapport … not sure they still do. Banks should make sure their own log in system is secure, and I trust they do.
BTW I use the abovementioned laptop for some questionable googling, but have another machine with AV for banking.
I remember taking up Santander’s offer of Trusteer Rapport - it served no real purpose and, within months, had generated huge amounts of logging data. IIRC, it wasn’t simple to uninstall, either …
I have the freebie Avast but the twoI have had both crashed and lost a lot of data…one new hard drive this laptop has the disc from the desktop…the saved rescue disks would not work…so was bye bye Sony Vaio…
I have three machine licence for Bitdefender but the other computers are quite happy with Windows Defender and when this licence comes up for renewal I shall consider relying on Windows Defender.
The thing that annoys me about BitDefender and to a lesser extent NOD32 is that they charge renewing users more than new users so I tend to swap at renewal time.
Defender, yes, plus all the other things built in. (see image below)
Plus your browser security tools, cookie clearing etc.
Plus your computer manufacturer probably has it’s own tools on your pc.
And the banks do say … make sure you update your browser when required asap.
I have one computer (the one I use for banking) that updates Chrome automatically. The other, for some reason, doesn’t, but tells me when to update: I just need to close Chrome and reopen it.
Bitdefender has been on the system for a few years now. Originally put on because it had one of the best malware detection rates according to a number of AV testing services. Also, Windows Defender, which you might have thought would have the least impact on system performance, actually had more than some third-party programs (again according to testing services). My computers were indeed noticeably snappier when Bitdefender was installed and MS Defender disabled.
Things change and MS Defender has got better over the years at both performance and the protection it gives. False positive rates look to be coming down too. Time to think about dispensing with any third-party protection come November when Bitdefender comes up for renewal. I disabled auto-renewal for the program. Licences can be most often be found on Amazon for half the cost of Bitdefender’s own licence renewal.
